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Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle sub-episode 4350A for away for August and preparing for our 18th birthday Bugle live stream live spectacular on the 26th of October.

Details all available at the bugle website thebuglepodcast.com.

In the meantime for this sub-episode let's take a look back at some classic bugle lives from the recent past.

To take you through them here is producer Chris.

Oh what a seamless transition that was.

Thanks Andy.

Best to the family.

Now let's start this episode in October 2020 where we did a festival show with Nish and Alice, the very same legends who will be joining us this October on stage.

Has anything changed in five years?

I hope so.

Let's see.

Top story this week, evolution and the state of the human species.

Well Nish, Alice, we are, it turns out, still evolving.

I mean when you look at the state of our species and we are easily one of the most famous species of all time of course take that ring-tailed mongoose.

I mean you can't help thinking we're a great species.

We've compensated for our shortcomings, you know, know, a lack of horns, a lack of lethal fangs, lacerative claws, venomous snout pendages, the works, by using our superior brains to work out many and wonderful other ways of killing things and each other.

That's the mark of a special species.

But it turns out we're not finished.

Scientists have discovered that we're still evoluting.

We're developing new arteries and we're losing teeth.

Nish, I know you're a massive fan of human evolution

and you've very much benefited from it yourself as a modern human.

Oh, I'm using my opposable thumbs right now.

Look at that.

Sensational skills.

Yeah, Indeed,

this is big news and I was very glad to read this story because I'll be honest,

every other piece of evidence I've been confronted with every time I open a newspaper or turn on the news is suggesting that humans are very much evolving in the opposite direction.

So on a day when 5,000 people march through London to protest for their rights to kill old people by breathing them to death with disease, It's hard to not see this as a positive, a badly needed positive sign.

So the evolution, pieces of evolution in question, are we might be losing our wisdom teeth, which does feel a bit on the nose as metaphors go, but the other piece of evolution is that we're also getting an extra artery in our arms.

We're getting an extra artery.

Now, here's the big question.

Listen, I'll be the first person to admit it.

I have absolutely no idea about science in open defiance of every racial stereotype.

I refuse to be another statistic, okay?

So I've determined to be the only Asian who doesn't understand a single f ⁇ ing thing about any science whatsoever.

But all I can speculate wildly on is that this extra artery is to get more blood to our hands so we can post on the internet with more strength and venom.

That's exactly why we're evolving these arteries, right?

These are posting vessels.

I mean, this is one of the common misunderstandings about evolution, Nish, that everything that evolves happens sort of purposively and that it meets a need rather than sort of being a randomly selected process.

It's more of an artery and not a sciencery.

Let's just let that hang there.

Thank you.

I mean, that's the only joke I have for this section.

Social media's causing other evolutions.

Social media thumb, getting much better thumbs, getting also reversible skin for for 100 more tattooable skin area uh getting a gradually developing additional forehead musculature that is evolving quickly to enable uh the next generation one or two down from us to have even deeper frowns they're going to need to have one thinking about the state of the world the human bile duct now goes straight from the gallbladder up into the mouth for use in presidential campaigns and things and personally I mean there's a few things I'd like to see I'd like you know a protective bit of protective skin on the end of the male

appendage.

I think that would be really useful and I can't fully understand why there isn't one for a

family show.

One of the interesting aspects of evolution is that another scientific report I was reading, and I do my I researched this show intensely, Beauty.

I hope you realize that.

That at least five times in the history of evolution, something has evolved from something that was not a crab into something that is a crab.

Now, yeah, there we go.

Five different times you've had something evolving into a crab.

This is according to the crab-bothering boffins who give a shit about shit like this.

And I mean, it's a classic scientist.

I mean, well done for working it out.

Instead of finding out crucial stuff like how many octopuses it takes to change a light bulb or how many quarter pounders a T-Rex could have theoretically eaten before vomiting and whether Neanderthals had X-ray vision or could pee round corners.

But this is important science.

Five times something's evolved into a crab, mostly from other crustaceans or crusties, if we're still allowed to call them that.

And that's the PC lobby have stopped us calling them that as well.

But obviously, in the context of human evolution, the crab is something to aspire to.

Would you not think, Alice?

I mean, I know you're a flamingo sceptic, and I don't know if this.

No, I love a crab.

I feel like crabs, evolution-wise, are the

crabs are the table chips of evolution.

Like, no matter what you get, you're going to get a thing of chips for the table.

That's what crabs, that's the function of crabs.

Just for safety, you want to have some chips there in case whatever else you order is not good.

I can't remember now if British people call them fries or not.

Hot chips.

Well, it's near enough.

I mean the context, you know, it's very environmentally friendly.

The crab seldom takes flights.

We're still, you know, the big clacky snapper arms.

Give it a couple of generations.

I think that'll be very, very, very handy.

And, you know, I think social media has made us, we're not physically developed into crabs yet, but I think maybe, again, this is social media-ish, you know, we are developing a spiritual hard shell and big, clacky, snapper limbs for making abusive comments and a pathological fear of embracing views that do not coincide with our own, which is very much a crab attribute.

I mean, when did you last hear a crab use the words actually Genevieve?

You might have a point.

Well, and also,

we're evolving the ability to only move side to side and not progress forwards.

But other than that...

There we go.

One of my favourite things I read about this in terms of animal evolution is that some elephants have now evolved to be tuskless because we keep on chopping their tusks off.

Now, some might see that as a damning indictment of humanity's inability to coexist with other creatures on this planet.

I see us as nature's mews.

Nature is having to move forward because of our horrific behavior.

It's absolutely brilliant.

We're going to see

the next generation of chickens evolving pre-basted in Nando spices.

I see that as a huge positive.

I mean, yeah, I love an urban animal, for example, like animals that have adapted to humanity.

Every other animal meeting with humanity is like

off or died.

I feel like I saw, you know,

possums that eat out of bins.

I saw a cat the other day in the park with a whole KFC family meal that I think it bought with its own money.

That kind of thing I find very inspiring.

I like the giraffes with a big lamp on it.

The COVID news now

that's I think that sting was entirely a pro that's basically a summary of the year that musical sting

Nish, Alice, you're both the Bugles official totally intractably incomprehensibly confusing global literal and metaphorical physical and spiritual pandemic correspondents.

What the f is going on?

I'll tell you what's going on Andy.

Money, money, money, money!

Money!

A lot of people are viewing COVID as a,

you know,

a stop on humanity's progress and a real moment at which everybody's trapped indoors and, you know, it's having a real negative impact and claiming people's lives.

But those people are cashless hippies

because you should be viewing COVID.

You should be viewing COVID as a huge opportunity to sneak some sweet cream off the top.

Andy, there's been a lot of developments in COVID corruption news.

On this side of the Atlantic, there's a string of investigations is being opened into, and I believe this is the technical parliamentary term, where all of our fing money has gone.

Because we have spent

12 billion pounds on a track and trace system.

And at the moment, the track and trace app and system is

effectively tracking and tracing to the same extent as a bloodhound who died in the mid-19th century.

It is neither tracking or tracing shit.

And we've spent £12 billion on it so far.

And here's the thing, Andy, people in glass houses, but what I would say is £12 billion on the track and trace app makes Quibi look like strong value for money.

Because say what you will about the quality of its output, the output was put out.

Okay?

Whereas the track and trace app,

the track and trace app is neither tracking nor tracing.

Now, the whole system is being run by Dido Harding, who has some experience in consultancy and also working in the supermarkets,

working on the boards of the supermarkets, Tesco and Sainsbury's.

And so, as such, has no fing relevant experience whatsoever.

Although that's not strictly true in terms of COVID, because she's also on the board of the Cheltenham horse racing event, which happened earlier this year and was a super spreader event.

So, Dido Harding's only experience of coronavirus is potentially being involved in spreading it to a bunch of people.

Therefore, Dido Harding is as fucking qualified to do anything about corona.

Like, was the Wuhan back not available?

Could they not get the pangolin?

Could they not have just stuffed a COVID-adled lung on a plinth and had that run the fucking track and trace system?

Pretty nice, eh?

Let's go further back to 2018, live from the Edinburgh fringe with Alex Edelman and Alice.

Top story of this week, the sun.

We've all heard of it and

we've all at times enjoyed it and resented it.

The world is currently having a bit of a tricky relationship.

Not that sun, Chris.

Sorry, sorry.

Chris,

we're having a bit of a tricky relationship, I'd say, with our number one star, the big hot thing that really puts the solar into the solar system.

It's been causing merry havoc

here on Earth by shining much too hard.

It has been, I know, probably not here in Scotland, but it has been seriously hot around the world.

A lot of heat flying around that may be linked to climate change.

and a portent of now unstoppable devastation to come thanks to humanity's collective failure to take notice of warnings or it may more likely just be the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra enjoying a nostalgic resurgence

But ironically, actually, when it is over 40 degrees Celsius, burying your head in the sand is actually quite a good way of keeping yourself cool.

But luckily, at last,

we are doing something about it.

Yes, NASA has launched the Parker Solar Probe over the weekend, setting the spacecraft on a journey that will take it closer to the Sun than any human-made object before it.

The Parker probe will reach as close as 3.8 million miles to the Sun's Sun's surface, taking it directly through the Sun's atmosphere.

According to NASA, this will take it so close that it will actually, quote marks, touch the Sun.

You can't say actually and then put touch in inverted commas.

The quote marks mean actually not actually.

You cannot sarcastic quote marks touch the Sun.

If someone left a user review on my Edinburgh Fringe Ticket website that said my show sarcastic quote marks touched them, I'd be furious.

I mean, 3.8 million miles is a pretty loose definition of touch by that definition I'm literally quote touching all of you right now everyone literally all of you especially you Edelman

in a really creepy way nice

my favorite part of the whole story is the comments on the Independent News website's coverage of the quote of

the quote event which

someone has said Superman's been there and done that dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot next

and another person has said not to touch the earth not to touch the sun nothing left to do but run run run run let's run Jay Morrison

my favorite thing about it about it was I watched some of the pet press conference online and the NASA spokesman's going through the details someone unmanned right and so and he goes yes Jim unmanned

very important scientific research This is part of a project that NASA's been doing for years to find out whether the sun is, as popular mythology would have it, a source of heat and light for our planet, despite being 90 million miles away, or whether it is in fact a large flaming biscuit.

Also, they want to discover why the sun is sometimes hot, like on a clear day, and other times

not so hot or visible, like when it's cloudy.

So I guess if we get closer to that.

Do you know,

it's costing 1.5 billion to send it, but I think it could have been so much cheaper if we just launched it at night, right?

It would be so much.

Who stopped quoting your president?

Well, I mean, you know, that's nothing on Space Force.

Right.

Da da da da da.

Space Force, da da da, Space Force, da da da da.

I mean, in a speech Thursday, the Vice President Mike Pence outlined plans to create Space Force, which is billed as a new branch of the US military dedicated to fighting wars in space.

Apparently, the idea

is getting respect from people who want to defend satellites in space from Russian and Chinese interference, and also Star Trek fans, who I assume desperately hope the principles of non-aggression and peaceful diplomacy will leak out like radiation from a warp core breach.

At best, it will cost more than $8 billion to establish this kind of pre-emptive defense presence in our skies that will definitely invite reciprocal Space Force investments from the political enemies of the US.

And at worst, it will end in raging atmospheric battles in the skies above our homes.

What I'm saying is there is no way to win.

This is the Kobe Ashimaru.

Do you know Roger Stone, who's one of Donald Trump's advisors currently under investigation, tweeted an image of

himself and a bunch of other Trump cabinet members in Space Force gear, and then had to delete the image

because, did you see this?

Someone had photoshopped not just their faces over the faces of NASA crew members, but also a new mission patch over the Apollo mission patch, and that new mission patch had

swastikas.

And the caption of the

The captain of the original picture said, In space no one can hear you lie.

And Stone said, I love this.

I heard that Trump said that we're going to have a space force and we're going to get the aliens to pay for it.

I can't wait until they send an actual manned mission to the sun where the first words of the first man to disembark will be, one small step for, ah,

ah, I'm quote, Mark's actually dead.

The Parker Solar Probe, back to that quickly, Parker Solar Probe Coincentroni, also the name of one of the finest amateur endoscopy products on the market today.

Is

the fastest man-made object

ever created at 430,000 miles an hour?

120 miles a second.

In context, if you were caught driving at 430,000 miles an hour on a British road, you would be banned from driving for 62,658 years.

What a meaningful statistic.

Yeah, which cop car is that fast?

So

this Space Force has not been universally admired.

Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said he thought

cybersecurity was more important.

His brother, also an astronaut,

Mark Kelly, called Space Force redundant and wasteful and I would say that is exactly what the aliens want you to think

they've already called

mean the same thing so it's kind of redundant and wasteful use of words yes

also redundant and wasteful wins votes we know that from but also they've the aliens have already invaded Russia and it's easy to tell have you ever heard them speak it's absolute gibberish

mark Mark Kelly pointed out that he was on the news and they asked him about it and he said we already have one.

It's part of the Air Force.

And they said, is it really?

He said, it's like taking the submarines out of the Navy and calling it the under-the-sea force.

We're going to kill those little mermaids.

You watch us.

We'll have a quick sum fact box.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that the sun is hot.

And I mean really hot.

Hotter, some claim, than pizza.

fresh out of the oven.

In fact, a pizza oven is approximately 700 degrees Kelvin, whereas the corona of the sun is 2 million degrees Kelvin, or 2,800 pizza ovens rolled into one,

but bigger.

So the corona of the sun would actually cook the perfect pizza in exactly 0.02 seconds,

whilst the 15 million degree Kelvin center of the sun would cook a perfect joint of roast beef in 4,000th of a second and slow roast an elephant in 0.1.

But be warned, unless you ate your food and left the restaurant within 1.3 nanoseconds of arriving at Shea Sol for dinner, you would either be dead or so badly sunburnt you would not enjoy your food at all.

Fact two, we're all familiar with the phrase, oh look.

We're all familiar with the phrase, look, the sun is rising.

But the reason that the sun rises in the morning is because overnight it naturally fills with hydrogen,

which makes it float above the horizon in time for breakfast.

And finally, fact three.

If the sun is indeed, as the great

solarologist team of Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell claimed in their hit song of 1969, if the world is indeed a great big onion, then the sun is by deduction a satsuma as big as a hot air balloon.

And finally,

the popular song The Sun Has Got His Hat On was released in 1932 with two versions released the same year.

One recorded by the Henry Hall BBC Dance Orchestra, the B side of the single being the original rendition of f the polis, made famous by the later 1980s cover version by the influential rappers NWA.

The other version by chart toppers Ambrose and his orchestra was later banned

after it proved to contain hidden messages encouraging people to perform satanic sacrifices.

But in reality, the sun actually has no hat.

If the sun had originally had a hat, it would have burnt off at least 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the sun came into existence.

Ironically, when it is sunny, you should wear a hat.

The dinosaurs had no hats.

Join the dots.

Here endeth the lesson.

Right, Alex out, Nish back in, Alice still there.

It's June 2019 for an episode titled So Many Holes.

Well, here we are.

It's we are as we speak here on London South Bank, projectile vomiting distance from Westminster.

I imagine as we speak, there are high-level talks at the UN about whether some kind of international force should be dispatched to restore democracy to the UK.

What's extraordinary time?

Now, Nish,

you've got close links to the Conservative Party.

Sorry, that was our special secret, wasn't it?

Do we have any Conservative Party members in today?

Anyone who might be able to help choose our Prime Minister for us?

Taking back control of our democracy.

Preparations are also in full swing for the official defenestration of Theresa May.

She will be thrown out of the window of 10 Downing Street, albeit the ground floor window, and they might let her use the door.

They can't actually use the defenestration window because Gladstone painted it shut in the 1870s, the canny old bastard.

But,

I mean, Nish, what's

you're our Conservative Party correspondent, what's your name?

Absolutely, I am.

Proud to be here.

Well, look, we're faced now with a straight-up decision.

And by we, I mean none of us.

The Conservative Party will pick our next Prime Minister.

160,000 members will choose the leader of the Conservative Party by extension, who is our Prime Minister.

And I think I speak for everyone when I say I'm so glad we voted leave in order to return democratic power to a small group of retired stockbrokers in Kent.

It's time to take back control and return it to eight men who are all called Darren, who hate their wives and wish it was legal for a man to marry a golf course.

So many holes.

Family show.

Quite literally, my daughter is in the audience.

Well, Andy, she is about to learn some language.

It's a straight runoff between

Jeremy Hunter, who presided over a period of funding reductions in the NHS, resulting in the head of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, to condemn conditions in British hospitals as being a humanitarian crisis.

And he's up against Boris Johnson, who stands accused of adding five years to the prison sentence of Nazanin Zagreb Radcliffe, who used racial slurs in a newspaper column and described women wearing burkhas as letterboxes or bank robbers.

The choice has now come down to a dick or an arsehole.

And what we wouldn't give for something in between?

The nation of Britain is desperate for a Perineum Prime Minister.

A commander in gooch, a taint at the top.

I mean, this is there's many things

I thought would never happen in my life.

Being selected for the Venezuelan synchronized belching team,

becoming Pope,

seeing the Queen down eight pints of lager and seeing pump up the jam on a karaoke machine,

waking up one morning with a bionic extendable leg, which I could use for tripping up escaping criminals or laskooing escaped ice cream vans, and desperately hoping Jeremy Hunt becomes Prime Minister.

And to be honest, that was the one I least expected to happen.

Yeah, we've left down, we've gone down to the two.

There's a bit of sort of pretty extensive whittling process, which resulted in Michael Gove and Dominic Raab being eliminated, the former for doing too many drugs and the latter for not doing enough drugs.

And then the other two who represented various wings of the Conservative Party, Rory Stewart, who represented the remain wing, and Sajid Javid, who represented the how can we be racist?

He's here and he's fine wing.

And they all participated in a a debate on Channel 4 last week, which between the pre-written content and the make-up of the panel, which was four white guys, one brown guy, and no women, wasn't so much a leadership debate as it was a British comedy panel show.

And I speak as someone who has very much been the javid on a few episodes of Mock the Week.

Jeremy Hunt told the Conservative Progress Conference,

who knew such a technique as that.

That's like hearing about the abattoir owners' Veganism Awareness Week event.

He said that the Conservatives should not, quote, ignore the crocodile lurking under the water.

In other words, the Labour Party.

So don't, so don't, you know, beware, I mean, it's fair fair, beware the crocodile lurking under the water, and instead jump into a vat of sulfuric acid with an acid-resistant shark in it.

That is the choice we're facing.

And Boris Johnson,

there he is.

I mean,

what have we become?

He could be Prime Minister.

Did it all make you feel like going round all the World War cemeteries, knocking on every headstone, and saying, I'm sorry you died for this?

Oh, dear.

I've got a little bit of information about the 160,000 people who were going to make that decision.

YouGov did some polling of the Conservative Party membership and they asked the question: Would you rather Brexit took place even if it caused the following scenario?

Now, the results are genuinely alarming.

63% said they would rather Brexit took place even if it resulted in Scotland leaving the EU.

61% said they'd rather it took place even if it causes significant damage to the UK economy.

59% said they'd be fine with it even if Northern Ireland left the UK.

And 54% of Conservative Party members said that they want Brexit to happen, even if it results in the destruction of the Conservative Party.

The only thing they would not want Brexit to happen in the instance of is of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.

And at this point, you have to think: what are these people afraid of?

And the answer is paying a basic amount of income tax.

And also, you gov, have a bit of fun with it.

Enjoy your work.

Start asking other questions like, what about if Godzilla attacks?

What about if there was an Old Testament style curse resulting in the death of all firstborn children?

Or, and I think this would be a very interesting question, replacing the queen on the five pound note with me.

How would that,

if that was a condition of Brexit,

you know, as you say something and you realize as you're saying it, someone is going to photoshop that.

I've already drawn it.

I keep telling you, that's not legal tender, Andy.

I mean, it is.

Brexit was all about taking back control of our democracies and this is this is democracy at work.

It's a democracy in the same way that a dead rat on a plate is a fillet steak.

In that, yes, there are some similarities, but they in no way outweigh the differences.

I'm just enjoying as a representative of my country being a little bit outside of this whole debate because I've been back in Australia and none of this matters over there.

I'm also a representative of my country in that I'm very hot, very dry, and extremely isolated.

Are you done on, I think we're on this?

Oh yeah, I mean we're all done.

Yeah.

As in, we are all fixed.

Because three assholes are going to pick another asshole to be in charge of all of the fingholes.

I actually googled Tori arsehole and

of the first page of results that came up on Google, I've got it up on the screen there, there seems to be one recurring face.

In fact, I did a little graph.

So it's

so Boris Johnson came up five, Theresa May three, Mark Francois one, Philip Davis one, George Osborne one.

But what I really liked about it actually was when I kept looking and when you scroll through there's a few other faces who appear including Nish Kumar.

Can I just clarify?

Under that picture of me is just it just says Jacob Reese Reese Mogg, an arsehole.

Right, that will do for now, I think.

If Andy's not back by next week, we should have synced our diaries, really.

There might be some more live action.

I guess we should have a plan.

We don't.

Come see us live.

That's the point.

Come see us live.

Anyone in the world can watch.

Go to our website and you can find out all about getting tickets for the room at the Leicester Square Theatre or a live stream.

Goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.